Deceptive Love (16 page)

Dain strode into the outer office at two thirty. An eyebrow quirked when he saw Keri composedly typing at Elise's desk, but he didn't comment on Elise's continued absence, "Come into my office, Keri," he ordered as he headed toward the door to his own office.

"Of course, Mr. Randolph," Keri agreed meekly. Dain glared at her, but Keri managed to keep a straight face even though her eyes danced merrily. "Oh, by the way, Mr. Randolph, your sister came to the office this morning."

A strange expression, almost apprehensive, flitted across his face. "What the devil did Denise say to you?" he barked.

"Why ... why nothing," Keri stammered, disconcerted by his reaction. "She expected you to take her to lunch. She wasn't . . . ah . . . pleased to discover you weren't here," Keri explained carefully. "She left immediately."

"Oh, that's all right then. I'll call her later." He was so obviously relieved that Keri wondered. "Come on in, Keri." He stood in the doorway, waiting for her.

Fortunately the phone rang just at that moment, to Ken's relief. She signed that she'd follow after handling the call and he had to be content with that. He went into the office and Keri felt like wiping a metaphorical hand across a sweaty brow. She needed a moment to restore her equilibrium and her pulse rate.

She had always been aware of the virile attraction Dain possessed in such abundant measure, starting from the moment she had walked into his office that first day. It had, however, been a wary awareness because of her previous experiences and her firm resolve to avoid all office entanglements.

Dain had been equally resolved not to allow her to remain aloof. He had moved swiftly to pry her out of her protective shell, and having once wrenched her from her safe chrysalis, he had forced her to acknowledge, by her response to his kisses and caresses, that she was by no means indifferent to him. Keri was sure that he wasn't going to be content to stop at that point.

Schyler had been no real threat, posing nothing more than nuisance value, though he would have been appalled to hear himself so described. Her initial mild interest—he had been a pleasurable escort until he got out of hand— had changed rapidly to intense irritation when he continued to press his suit. Dain was an entirely different proposition.

Keri wasn't sure what he was proposing to begin with, and what was worse, she wasn't at all confident of her ability to refuse him,
whatever
he proposed. Last night had been an eye-opener for Keri, in more ways than one. She had to admit that she had heretofore overestimated her self-control. She now knew that Dain could melt the walls of her defenses like sea water running over the walls of a sand castle at the beach.

The light flashed angrily, summoning her into the inner sanctum. Dain was getting impatient. Keri stood up, smoothed her blue linen dress down nervously, grabbed up pad and pencils to give her something to do with her hands (she didn't really believe Dain wanted to see her for the purpose of giving her dictation) and went in to beard the lion in his lair. She didn't think she was going to make a very good Daniel and be able to escape unscathed from the den.

"About time," Dain grumbled when she came in. "Close the door behind you, Keri," he added when she left it ajar.

She retraced her steps and obediently closed it. When she turned, she bumped her nose into his chest. He had approached cat-footed behind her and she turned right into his arms. She didn't even have time for a scandalized wail of "Dain!" before his mouth swooped to cover hers.

She tried to keep her lips firmly closed against the insidious invasion, but Dain was relentless. He wanted surrender and he got it. He ran the tip of his tongue over the surface of her lips, gently probing through to the locked gate of her teeth. There was nothing rough or harsh about his wooing, just that insistent, persuasive tongue tip, touching, tantalizing, seeking entry to give and take pleasure. Keri made a sound deep in her throat and abandoned her resistance. She really didn't want to fight Dain anyway.

Somehow, during her surrender, her arms crept up around his neck while Dain swiveled to lean back against the door. This pulled Keri forward, forcing her to press fully against his body, and she was supported almost totally by his long legs and torso. In this intimate position it was immediately apparent that Dain was deeply affected by her ardent response and Keri hazily realized that if one of them didn't call a halt soon, whoever came through that door next was going to get the shock of his or her life.

I'll do it in a minute
, she thought fuzzily.
Just one minute more
. When Keri's resistance to Dain collapsed, it did so most thoroughly.

Dain's hands came up to frame her face, the palms lying warmly at the angles of her jaw, the fingers threading over and behind her ears. He moved her face gently back and forth, sweeping his lips from side to side across her tender mouth.

Keri's own hands were busy, weaving in and out of the thick, silky hair at the back of his head. Her palms shaped to the hard bones of his skull, instinctively compressing and releasing in an age-old rhythm.

Dain's bete noire, the telephone, remained silent for once, but gradually the realization that this was neither the time nor the place was borne in upon them both. Dain brought them gently down from a plateau of frenzy, holding Keri close against his body and dropping little soothing kisses over her cheeks, eyelids, and forehead.

When they were both breathing more normally and calmly, Keri muttered warningly, "Don't you
dare
say you wish you hadn't done that!"

She felt the chuckle reverberate in his chest. "I'm not only glad I did it, Keri, darling, I
meant
to do it!" He hugged her and then eased his tight hold on her reluctantly as he continued. "I've thought of little else since I left you last night. I'm afraid Senor Villarreal found me woefully abstracted. He had to call me to attention several rimes and I wasn't able to work up much enthusiasm for the forestry products combine he was trying to convince me to invest in."

Keri couldn't resist. "Oh," she said guilelessly. "Are you branching out into lumber now?" and batted her eyelashes frantically at him.

He groaned in a satisfactory manner and she patted the arm which was still clasped around her waist. "I'm sorry, but it was only a very small pun," she said contritely.

"Those are the worst kind," he said darkly. "I hope you're not going to turn out to be an inveterate punner. It might put a tremendous strain on our relationship."

"Only when the opportunity is so irresistible," she reassured him. What she really wanted to say was
and what is our relationship?
but she couldn't put it into words. With her surrender to the urgency of his kiss, Keri had finally admitted to herself that she didn't want to continue to combat her growing attraction to Dain. No, call it by its right name, she admitted almost sadly. She loved him!

She had to accept the fact that he might only feel desire for her, but she'd just have to take that chance. She had run safe all of her life, but it had been easy to do. No man had ever attracted or affected her as Dain did, and she was now forced to reexamine the values that guided her life.

It all came down to the fact that she was going to have to take a chance. If she ran away from him via a job of Charles's finagling, she might be passing up the most important relationship of her life. Conversely, however, she might, and it was all too possible, be setting herself up for the most devastating and destructive experience she could conceive of.

She sensed depths in Dain, the potential for a deep and enduring relationship, but did she touch those depths or merely wade in the shallows of physical desire? That he desired her was evident. That he had desired (and taken what he desired) other women before her was also evident. She was not jealous of what had gone before, but she was fearful of what would come after.

Well, life never fit itself tidily into neat little boxes and if you tried to shove it into a too small box, you suffocated it. Life was for living and learning and she could only hope that the lessons wouldn't cost her more than she could afford to pay.

"Keri?" Dain shook her slightly to bring her wandering attention back. "What are you thinking about?"

Keri leaned her head into his chest. "Must I be thinking? Could I not just be enjoying?" She avoided answering him. There were some things she could not yet say to him. When she could say freely to him all that came to her mind, then ...
then
she would know what price life would require from her. She pulled herself from his arms, and as she did so, heard and felt the crack of a pencil as her foot snapped it in half. It seemed she was fated to drop everything whenever Dain decided to kiss her.

She knelt and gathered up her steno pad and the scattered pencils, those still whole and the broken pieces of the one she had trod upon. Dain took the broken pieces from her and tossed them into a nearby wastebasket.

"You didn't really think I wanted to dictate a letter, did you?" he teased her gently.

"Well. . . no," she admitted, "but I thought I ought to be prepared for any eventuality."

"And were you prepared?" he asked with great interest.

She gave him a huffy look and he laughed. "All I can say is that if you were unprepared, you rose magnificently to the occasion. The mind boggles at what you could do 
if you were prepared?" He continued. "I want to talk to you, Keri."

She rolled her eyes heavenward. "I've heard
that
before!"

"Keri," he said warningly.

Keri composed her face into a reasonable facsimile of the prim expression she had cultivated as Miss Dalton and folded her hands before her. "Of course, Mr. Randolph. You were saying, Mr. Randolph?"

Dain laughed helplessly.
"I've
created a monster." He raised his hands in mock surrender. "All right, Keri. Honors even." He punctiliously escorted her to a chair by the side of his desk before seating himself at his own.

"I have to go to New York for two days. I'll catch the evening owl tonight and come back on the early bird Friday morning. I have tickets for Wolf Trap for us for Friday night. The National Symphony is having an all- Tchaikovsky presentation, and I noticed last night that you seem to favor him, judging from your music collection." He waited for her reaction. He was never quite sure just
how
Keri was going to react to any given situation. Would she acquiesce without an argument?

She surprised him yet again. "Oh, I do enjoy Tchaikovsky. Do you know what selections will be featured? My favorite pieces are the Capriccio Italien and Romeo and Juliet. I've heard so much about Wolf Trap. Are we going to sit on the lawn with wine and a picnic hamper? I'll be glad to supply the hamper. I have a recipe for Chicken Teriyaki that's marvelous cold . . . ." She paused and looked at him expectantly.

Inwardly Keri was chuckling. From the surprised, but gratified, expression on Dain's face she judged that he hadn't expected her to agree to his highhanded usurpation

of her free time so readily. He had obviously been prepared to ride roughshod over any objections she might have put forth, much as Schyler thought he was doing when he phoned and announced that they had a date Saturday night. The difference was, she was going to let Dain get away with it because she wanted to go out with him. She wasn't going to let Schyler talk her into going out with him. If Dain didn't make plans for her Saturday as well as her Friday, then she would. However she arranged it, she wasn't going to be there when Schyler knocked on her door!

"Well, the tickets are for the covered seating, but I'm sure we can change them for lawn seating, if that's what you'd prefer," he agreed easily.

"Oh, yes," Keri enthused. "Would you like for me to call about changing the tickets? And may I supply the picnic? You can bring the wine," she offered generously.

"Okay, Keri. Chicken, you said? Sounds good. Just call the box office. The tickets are in my name and we'll pick them up that night. Are you going to see Charles and Mary this weekend?"

"No. That is, I hadn't planned to," Keri hedged, remembering that she might have to retreat to McLean to escape Schyler if nothing else was offered.

"Mmm. Have you done much sightseeing in downtown D.C. since you've been here? I thought we might spend the day dipping into the Smithsonian if you haven't made plans to go to the Lawsons'. Then I promise to take you someplace quiet for dinner where there's no dancing. After a day of walking on marble floors you'll not be in any shape to waltz and neither will I, for that matter." He grinned at her.

"I'd love to, Dain. Could we go to the Air and Space 
Museum? I've heard that it's fascinating. I visited most of the others many times during the time Dad pulled Pentagon duty, but I haven't been in Washington since the Air and Space opened. I might as well warn you that I am indefatigable when it comes to museums and art exhibits. When Dad was stationed here before, I spent many weekends crossing and recrossing the Mall, going from one museum to another. Mother complained that she and Dad couldn't afford to keep me in shoes because I wore out so many pairs sightseeing."